Joshua Pendrick
Joshua Pendrick
Age 25: Owner, Royal Touch Painting
It was several days after the fact, but Joshua Pendrick was still celebrating, and reliving, Boston University’s national collegiate hockey championship.
“I was standing on my couch screaming,” he said while describing his viewing experience of the championship game against Miami of Ohio, during which BU, his alma matter, stormed back from two goals down late and went on to win in overtime. “Coach [Jack] Parker pulled the goalie with three minutes left. There was a lot of time left to be doing that, but the strategy paid off — they came back and tied it.”
This was the same Jack Parker who, during Pendrick’s sophomore year at BU, told him he was no longer good enough to be on the school’s hockey team, a squad he joined as what’s known as a recruited walk-on, meaning he was taking a sizable gamble with regard to playing time and, as it turned out, just staying on the team.
While Pendrick initially viewed his cutting as a serious setback and dream killer — “I wanted to play in the NHL” — he later saw that moment as a turning point in his life. Instead of hockey, he now focused on school, specifically business, and eventually wound up in a program with a national company called University Painters, which essentially sets people up in small commercial and residential painting businesses and forces participants to learn by doing.
Pendrick did it so well, he was named Rookie Student Manager of the Year in 2004, a year before he started his own business, Royal Touch Painting, while still in school. Today, the business is thriving (although challenged by the economic times) and is “bridging the gap,” as Pendrick put it, with regard to companies that offer quality work but poor customer service, and those with the opposite imbalance.
He’s also active in the community. He’s hockey coach at Springfield’s Central High School, and is involved with several organizations, including the Young Professionals Society of Greater Springfield.
No, he’s not in the NHL, but he’s made other, quite different, dreams come true.
—George O’Brien
